Hand-drawn Brand Identity for Food & Beverage Brands

Brand Identity, Custom Illustration, Packaging Design

The Challenge
Build a comprehensive brand guide for a new kids' ice cream manufacturer. The main challenge was to design a visual identity that would instantly connect with kids in a world oversaturated with stimulants.
​
The Approach
This project was very special for me, as it brought me back to my childhood. To create the moodboard, I reminisced on the feeling of being rewarded with ice cream as a child. This visual identity is the embodiment of that pure joy. After curating the moodboard, I moved on to designing the framework for the brand, beginning with the color palette. The analogous pairing of pink and orange reads warm, energetic, and playful. Further, this color scheme was incorporated into the logo design. The logo was designed using organic shapes to bring a soft, approachable feel to the brand that would comfort kids and parents. I also added a tongue to the letter Y to symbolize the act of licking ice cream. Next, I added a playful bite mark to the letter m and added holes to the letter B. I wanted these holes to also follow the freeform, organic shaping like the other letters. As I worked on this design, I noticed that the holes resembled cute footprints, which brought me to my next idea, the character design. YumBum wanted a playful character that resonates with their target audience, kids. With this directive, my mind immediately visualized my toddler niece who loves ice cream. I needed this design to have the signature toddler chubby cheeks and remnants of arm rolls. I wanted this character design to have little easter eggs connecting it to the logo. The ears are a similar shape to the heads of the letters Y and U in the logo name. Notably, the character has its tongue sticking out, as does the logo. The character's footprint is the exact shape of the holes in the letter B in the YumBum logo. My vision is to have future marketing campaigns use the footprints as fun clues in ads, kids' games, and social media campaigns. Similarly to other design elements, I chose Glitzy Girl and Blue Winter as the brand fonts because of their organic shaping and playful nature. In addition, I created a custom illustration of ice cream cones, sprinkles, and ice cream drippings to be used as the official brand pattern. The brand also needed an initial packaging design for their first product line. For the package design, I followed the brand guide, using brand elements like color, typography, and character.
​
The Solution
The finished brand guide gave YumBum an organic, hand-drawn logo system with its own built-in easter eggs, a warm pink and orange color palette, a Glitzy Girl and Blue Winter font pairing, and a custom ice cream drip pattern for packaging and marketing. At the center of it all sits the brand's chubby-cheeked mascot, whose footprint doubles as the negative space inside the logo's letter B, ready to turn up as a playful clue in future ads, games, and social campaigns. The system carried straight through to the brand's first product packaging, a vanilla pint built entirely from that same visual language.